


A Torrent of Violence

by LordofLies



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Death, French Revolution, Gen, Gore, Javert Week, Post-Barricade, javert reflects
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 11:02:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1938465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LordofLies/pseuds/LordofLies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Javert knew revolution.  He had seen her without her mask, hideous and shrieking, spattered with blood.  Revolution was not a savior—she was a tyrant, a monstrous thing that lusted for blood and had no code but treason and retribution.  These boys were too young to remember, how could they know?  He had been only a child, but he had been old enough to understand terror.</p><p>Javert had always had a respect for authority, but it was not until he witnessed what true revolt was that he realized—without a tremor of doubt—that without strict enforcement of established order, humanity would cannibalize itself in a whirlpool of hatred and bloodlust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Torrent of Violence

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Javert Week on tumblr!

Blood seeped across the cobblestones beneath Javert’s feet. It filled the cracks between paving stones in a web of red threads, glistening in the afternoon sun like veins beneath flayed skin—the blood of Paris made visible for all the world to see.

Javert himself felt flayed. He prided himself on his forbearance, but even a heart of wood can swelter beneath the threat of a flame, and even Javert could tremble at his unexpected release, at the confusing and incongruous actions of the convict Jean Valjean.

Had Valjean also survived the night? Corpses of rebel and soldier alike littered the street, facedown in pools of their own blood or rent apart by cannon fire and grapeshot.

The organs of an unfortunate young wretch spilled out into the filthy street. Javert stopped pacing and stared at the corpse for a moment. The boy’s face was a hideous mask of horror and fear—eyes open and glassy, blood staining his beardless chin. His pale fingers were twisted up in his exposed bowels; he had likely spent the last moments before his death trying to force them back inside his body.

A few flies buzzed around the corpse, tracking across the bloody remains with pestilent feet. It was nearly evening and the June sun was hot. The rancid stench of blood and rotting meat rose from the sun-baked body in a noxious steam that was so vile and abominable it made even Javert gag.

What madness had possessed these children to do this? What had they expected would be the outcome of armed rebellion against the crown?

Such flagrant disrespect of authority was anathema to Javert. He could not comprehend it, that these corpses—who mere hours ago had been alive, who only weeks or months before had been law-abiding citizens—had suddenly sprung at the order of the world with claws outstretch and teeth-bared, like a dog turning suddenly upon its master.

Revolution! Ha!

What did these children know of revolution? Did they envision her as some noble lady with a pistol in one hand and a flag in the other, a cry of outrage on her lips and the star of equality shining on her brow? Did they imagine that liberty, equality, and fraternity joined hands with her against oppression and tyranny?

Javert knew revolution. He had seen her without her mask, hideous and shrieking, spattered with blood. Revolution was not a savior—she was a tyrant, a monstrous thing that lusted for blood and had no code but treason and retribution. He had been only a child, but he had been old enough to understand terror.

When these schoolboys drank and made merry and praised Napoleon and Robespierre, did they realize what false idols they worshiped as heroes and visionaries? Surely they knew the facts, the legacy of violence that these men of progress left behind them, but did they _understand_?

No. They did not. How could they? The eldest of them had not been five and thirty. The youngest… maybe twelve. They had not been there, nearly four decades ago, when France had rent herself apart and the Seine ran thick with blood. Thirty-nine years was not such a long time, and yet children were born and lived in died in the gaps between these paroxysms of human violence. They had been too young to understand.

Javert had not been too young. In 1789, when the Revolution began, he had been nine years old, living on the streets of Paris and very nearly a _gamin_ himself, for he loathed to spend much time with his mother. At nine years old he understood already that humanity was made up of two kinds of people—those within the law and those without—and his mother was without.

He remembered the crowds filling the streets, no gaps through which to escape, the deafening clatter of feet upon the stones, a surging wave of wrath that would trample incautious children without a drop of mercy.

He remembered the awful cheering of the mob, crowing like carrion birds, ready to rend the dead flesh of their enemies with their teeth. Wolves baying for blood. It had gushed through the streets.

In 1793, the beginning of the Terror, Javert had been 13 years old.

He remembered the scaffold looming like a black shadow against the sun, the razor edge of the blade gleaming like the cold eye of that horror—revolution!

Yes, Javert had seen revolution, and he had understood it. Revolution was a torrent of violence. Revolution was blood congealed between the cobblestones and baskets full of severed heads drawn alongside carts heaped with headless corpses. Revolution was sixty trials in the morning and sixty executions in the afternoon. Revolution was that endless line of men and women, struggling like wild beasts or standing listless in horror as they tried and failed to comprehend the shadow of death looming over them.

Revolution was guillotining an eighty year old widow for “various conspiracies,” an 18 year old boy for chopping down a tree, and young soldiers so horrified by what they were being compelled to do that they had blinded themselves rather than serve.

Revolution was the bile of humanity, surging up and taking hold of everything. Revolution was chaos, panic, and fear. Revolution was halt and destroy, degrade and dismantle. Javert had always had a respect for authority, but it was not until he witnessed what true revolt was that he realized—without a tremor of doubt—that without strict enforcement of established order, humanity would cannibalize itself in a whirlpool of hatred and bloodlust.

So these schoolboys thought that revolution could solve their problems? That armed uprising would somehow make life easy for the poor and breathe life back into the dying? Did they not understand? Did they not read their history books? The Revolution had occurred in part because the poor of France were starving. And after the Revolution? The poor were still starving.

If any change had trickled down to them, it had been brief and it had been small. Panic and fear choking France like a miasma, thousands slaughtered—and children still died like dogs in the streets.

Once, those memories would have brought bile surging up his throat; now they just made his stomach clench and his back stiffen.

The violence of it left him cold. He shied from it.

Javert may have been ferocious and persistent, but he was not violent. He, who used physical force only as a last resort. He, who brought an unloaded gun to a riot. Some would call it foolish. Javert thought it practical.

If he had shot one or two of the students when they discovered him, what then? Be shot himself? He knew he was doomed at the moment of his discovery; he knew the students were doomed the moment they decided to rebel against a government with far superior forces, waiting on a populace who would not come to their aid. He had foreseen this, and he had chosen to leave his weapon unloaded. Why?

He did not want that blood on his hands. Javert was many things, but an assassin was not one of them. Though he had served the police all his life, he had never inflicted a fatal blow upon another human being. He never wished to. He had seen enough death—had seen what became of those who killed—and he had decided rather to die as Abel than become Cain.

No, he could not understand these young lovers of Revolution who could not see that their mistress had treason in her blood and would turn on them soon as their vows left their lips. He did not understand them, but if Javert had been capable of pity, he might have pitied them. Instead, he continued to sift through the corpses of the fallen, searching for the man he was determined to catch. He tried to block out the murmurs of his memory and the unsettling tremors deep inside him. He was not that boy anymore. He could bear this horror, just another casualty in the battle between order and chaos. He was merely an agent of the law and it was not his place to reflect or to question, only to act. He was the sword in the hand of justice. He was the scale upon which she weighed the world, and he would bear this burden as he bore all others. He would move on—carrying only the memories of that long night and the marks of his bondage upon his wrists and throat—and he would ensure that justice triumphed.


End file.
